A long-running dispute over plutonium contamination at a former nuclear
dump near Paris has taken a new turn with the admission by the French nuclear
authority that radioactivity was more widespread than it had at first claimed.
The authority has ordered fresh tests on soil at the site.
The head of the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), Jean Teillac, has acknowledged
that not all the traces of radioactivity found in the soil at the site could
have come from the blocks of concrete which held 2500 containers of nuclear
waste between 1961 and 1973.
This was the CEA鈥檚 initial explanation for what it called 鈥榠nsignificant
traces鈥�, when a newspaper, Le Parisien, and the Committee for Independent
Research and Information on Radioactivity (CRII-RAD) revealed last month
that they had found traces of plutonium in the dump at Saint-Aubin, 30 kilometres
southeast of Paris.
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The containers were removed in 1973 after scientists at CEA complained
that the concrete blocks had begun to crack. The site was classified as
鈥榙econtaminated鈥� in 1979 and is now used to store waste from sewage farms.
After the initial revelations, the French environment minister, Brice
Lalonde, promised a new committee to control waste dumps, while the mayor
of Saint-Aubin tried to reassure local people by inviting them to take a
Saturday morning walk on the site.
But further tests with a dosimeter showed radioactive contamination
over 1 hectare of the 7-hectare site, spreading from what was formerly the
entrance to the dump. One suggestion is that truckloads of radioactive waste
were dumped from this entrance.
A fortnight ago, scientists took new soil samples from this area in
the presence of journalists. The samples are being analysed by the CEA and
at independent laboratories. The dosimeter tests locate only gamma rays,
but the laboratories will also test for the alpha particles which plutonium
emits as it decays.
The results of the tests will be available next week but are unlikely
to put an end to the dispute. The CEA says that any contamination that is
not connected with the containers of waste probably comes from earlier dumping
in the 1960s when outside firms were allowed to use the site.
However, the head of CRII-RAD鈥檚 laboratory, Francois Mosnier, reports
finding traces of europium in samples taken from the site which go back
only nine or ten years.
CRII-RAD also challenges the CEA鈥檚 claim that the plutonium levels are
well below the 74,000 becquerels per kilogram permitted by regulations in
force in 1966. CRII-RAD counters that the 3300 becquerels found in a kilogram
of soil at the site show that contamination is well above another official
level, given in 1970, of 3700 becquerels for an entire site.
The committee accuses the CEA of incompetence. 鈥榃hether it never carried
out tests for plutonium, or whether it did, but did not publish the results,
the case is equally serious,鈥� it says.
